Arranging Succulents in an Urn! 🌿🥰💚 // Garden Answer

hey guys how's it going so today i want to put together a succulent arrangement in this really cute little urn i picked this up down at the garden center yesterday or the day before i don't know whenever i went down there to get plants i saw this and i had to go back and get it because i think it's just so sweet and it's really lightweight and it does have a drain hole in there which is really nice and i mean for this succulent arrangement to be an outside arrangement just until the temperatures are too cold for it to be out here anymore in fact i kind of want to keep it on this pillar i mean we use this pillar a lot for flower arranging and other projects and such so it'll be nice to have something lightweight that i can remove when i need to use the pillar but something pretty to at least sit on it in the meantime while we're not using it so anyway i've got a really beautiful assortment of succulents that i've just been kind of gathering up for a while i mean you know we have a plant room upstairs where i've got some grow lights where i can keep a few things like this so i hauled a bunch of it out here i don't know exactly how this is going to turn out or what the outcome i just want it to be a beautiful mixed succulent arrangement so the first thing i'm going to start with is my cactus soil you want to make sure you use a soil that's formulated specifically for cactus or succulents because it drains really well it doesn't hold a lot of moisture around the roots which is really important and i always like to start with quite a bit in here because i typically remove a lot of the soil from around the succulents root balls because it allows me to pack the plants in a lot closer together a lot more easily so we'll start with about this much and we'll add if we need to along the way and i will probably slightly end up mounding this arrangement which we have done a video specifically on how i make a mounted succulent arrangement which we can link down below if you want to watch another succulent video but this is going to be fun because there's just so many beautiful colors so i'm just going to i'll show you what i do with the first succulent here let's start with this is an echeveria peacock eye it's beautiful blue with kind of a neon almost pink around the edges of the leaves there so i'm going to take off a lot of this soil and i knew no it looks kind of like drastic kind of flipping soil all over the place too but succulents like honestly i could take every single root off or just even cut the stem and pop it in here if i wanted to do it that way but it's nice to have a little bit of an anchor so what i do you can see right there what i'm left with i'm just going to pack some soil up against the side of the container right in the front here so that i have a barrier in between the root and the is this some kind of metal must be some kind of metal it feels like that it's yeah it's really thin but it's like definitely metal anyway so i kind of want to tip this can you see that if i if i kind of show you from the side there i'm going to tip it and tuck soil in around the roots like that and that way you can easily see this if i were to plant it straight up and down you would just get a different look of arrangement which is totally personal preference at this point but i like there to be kind of like a ring of beautiful succulents around the edge and then have it kind of mound up and i like to see the face of all the succulents so i think what i'm going to do is just continue on and this is probably going to be a fairly slow process because i just want to take my time and really get the color and texture right so i think the next thing i'm going to use is this right here this is a portulacaria which um it's a trailing one it's really beautiful now i don't need this entire thing so what we're gonna do is pop this out of its container and we are going to separate it so i just have a few little pieces i can use over the side ideally i should have a work table right here let me see how i can do this i'll just make a big mess cheddar stay away from my coffee bud reminded me don't want it to get cold i'm just going to separate this up a little bit and then whatever i have left over in the end i always just repot probably right back in this container it's almost kind of satisfying to do this a little bit i don't know why it feels good that's a that's a beauty of a piece let's try this one i'm just gonna start putting this stuff on the ground okay let's see if this looks too big are the cats fighting somewhere yeah what are you guys doing you guys need to behave yourselves oh that's gorgeous that is so so pretty okay i'm packing soil in around the roots okay so i think i need something maybe a little bit more red to bring out the red and the stem color here but i like the fact that you can still like it's airy enough that you can still see the beauty of the container this is nice i think this is a type of crassula i'm not sure crassula crustula i'm not sure what variety but it's got some beautiful coloring here nope i need to have the blue next to it see this is all about just like trial and error whoops and figuring out what goes well together what contrasts to look really beautiful and set each other apart that is gorgeous right there and then we can come in with our red there was just too much red together i think or too much green okay and now i'm going to build [Music] let's see what am i going to build maybe a little height here that's gorgeous but it's too green i think i think i need something bolder maybe not let's try it this is a crassula watch chain these are one of the easiest things to propagate and one of the easiest things to keep alive forever i have still i did a terrarium right after that was right after benjamin was born wasn't it that terrarium with the hydra stones with the three little plants and the mushroom it wasn't before i i seem to remember like having it be one of the first projects my mom came to watch benjamin while we popped out to the greenhouse for a little bit anyway it's still living and it has one of these in here and it's just like thriving and doing beautifully that looks pretty i think look at that i feel like i need to rotate this container a bit though so you can actually see what i'm doing isn't that nice maybe sink it down a little bit more oh that's so pretty i love that so much okay then a portulacaria varagata a rainbow elephant bush i think is what this one's called this is when i need more soil [Applause] echeveria dondo oh this one is rooted boy we never see succulents rooted like that that's crazy look at that okay well here we go we're gonna still tear off a lot of these roots was that from andrew yeah the beast root system i'm not sure but they i think they recently got a new supplier and the quality and the size like this right here was 3.99 not bad oh that looks good except for see like right now i feel like there's a little bit of a hole right here because we've got a low level and then a high level and i need some kind of a filler so we're going to fix this i'm indecisive today i think this will work this is a sedum firestorm i think that might well no that won't work it needs to be more blue what in the world i'm having issues maybe one of these darker ones yeah that might be nice this is an echeveria called licorice see how this looks in there tuck it in that looks good make sure to mount some soil up over its root ball here i think that at this point since i've got kind of the whole front done we'll flip it around you can see what it looks like because you can definitely see the mound i've got and then i'll start building from the other side anyway i wish i could build it from the front difficult so you can see here that it's got a little bit of a mound like it's a little bit higher than the side of the pot which i do tend to like to do because i like them to look layered like this but you can see that there aren't really visible roots i make sure to cover all of the root balls really well and that's how come the soil gets mounded and what they end up doing is they end up rooting into that soil and kind of compacting it or creating almost like erosion control if that makes sense to where when you water it there isn't soil coming out everywhere but in the meantime until they do that because it does take a couple months to start really kind of rooting in and forming new roots i just water very lightly and and gently and that way i tend to get away with it pretty well so now i'm going to just start building the other direction i think i need something bold right here like big and bold this might be too big and bold but maybe not let's try it this is an echeveria pollocks oh that's a beaut yes i need a little more soil using the soil that you just removed from the root ball is totally fine if you want to i don't tend to like to do that just because i don't know how long those plants have been in that soil and only if it's bug-free by the way you only want to be using bug-free plants anyway but i feel like using some new soil that's got a little bit of nutrient quality to it is better when you're starting out i'm going to tuck this aeonium mardi gras in so a few of these you aren't going to really be able to see i'm kind of doing it more for the benefit of the front of the display here i just didn't know what needed it until i saw it from the front now it looks more full from the front if that's possible a little bit of bold height here and i'm going to clip these lower leaves because i kind of damaged them anyway sneak my falcos in here quick and it'll make it easier for me to tuck stuff up next to them i want to draw a little bit of this more white variegated interest over onto this side so i've got some sedum here that i really want to tuck in right here but they're too tall so i'm just going to use them as cuttings and cut the root ball completely off and you can let these sit out and heal for a few days and let the cut and callous but you don't have to the only thing that you need to do is to make sure that you just don't water your arrangement for a little while after you plant it so just give it like a week these plants were all well watered when i before i put them in here so they'll be totally fine to wait for these to have a chance to heal just inside the soil and then they'll start to form roots eventually usually in a couple months and this is why i love succulents because they're so versatile this way i think i kind of like went about the design of this wrong i should have done like tall to skinny or tall to you know how i usually either start on the bottom ring and then work my way up i'm just like willy-nilly it's kind of weird yeah it looks good though good thank you all right okay i just feel like i need to work out something right here which might mean this echeveria needs to come up slightly okay in goes a panda plant gotta have that fuzzy texture in there somewhere so i'm just gonna stand back real quick and kind of just take a second and decide what i need to put in here to finish it off i think i'm done i think it looks good so i ended up putting in some more of the sedum right here is it called firestorm i think it's called firestorm but those and then the little sedums down here i used by cuttings and i think those are the only ones i did by cuttings everything else has roots um so i will wait a few days before i actually water this but let me kind of just twist it around for you so you can see like from all angles because this will be seen from all angles so it has to look good from all angles i love to put together one-sided things though it's like it's so nice to put together something you don't have to really worry about from the back or have to like use up a bunch of really beautiful looking succulents but i think the colors and the textures ended up being just like on point i need to clean it need a little fan like a little like blower thing or something no like a little almost like a baby nose oh right thing it'd make quite a mess it's a little bit difficult especially when you're dealing with echeverias like these right here this big big beast right around the corner here they have a powdery coating on their leaves and when you touch it it ruins the aesthetic of the plant yeah so aaron said you could see on this one where it had been touched i don't think i touched it they had a little bit of marring on them already from other like i don't know maybe i touched it i'm usually pretty good at not handling them too much i try to handle them from their stem or their roots because it just makes them look so much more clean and like perfection when there's not a bunch of fingerprints on them and that's something that i didn't know i remember when we went down to california we did a succulent arrangement with cindy from the succulent perch that was like the first year we were making videos and i remember going through a succulent like nursery and i was touching everything and she was like you really shouldn't be touching those because and she explained it to me and i was like oh you've got to be kidding me so it i mean i didn't even know that going down there i mean you know there's a lot to learn about stuff like this so anyway as in terms of care this is going to be the perfect location it's only going to be moving like two feet three feet to my left it gets really nice morning sun and then it's protected from the harsh afternoon sun which is what this arrangement will like i mean you usually think that succulents want full sun most of them some of them can do it but we're super harsh here i mean when it gets over 100 degrees the soft succulents like these echeverias will tend to burn on their leaves and i don't want that to happen so they'll get morning sun protection in the afternoon i'll wait a week to water and then after that they'll just get about once a week watering when they're outside if it's a little bit extra windy i'll probably give them a little bit more and then once it cools off usually 40 degrees is my threshold and i start moving everything in when it starts getting down to 40 because i know i have like a little smidge of time a little window to get everything inside so i'll move it inside somewhere that it's got a lot of light and then typically with an arrangement like this you might be thinking like oh my gosh you put way too many succulents in that arrangement they actually can handle this like for a year they can stay like this because you're packing them in so close it restricts the amount of room they have to grow and they just won't grow like plants can sense that and it'll take them a while even just to sit here and settle into their new home so we've got a couple three months before they'll even start to think about putting on more roots or even trying to grow at all so that's just something that i've learned throughout the years as well like i can get away with doing this because usually every once a year i want to take things apart and do something new anyway so if it wasn't something like it was something you want to keep for a really long time you could do it like this and then you could just eventually pop a succulent out here or there as your other ones need room or you could just give them a little bit more space but i like to not see soil i like to see all of these just colors and textures together i think it's really fun so anyway i think that's it thank you guys so much for watching this video i hope you enjoyed it and we will see you in the next one

Channel: Garden Answer

Views: 215,221

Rating: 4.9535837 out of 5

Keywords: Garden, Answer, Laura, Flower, gardening, gardener, beautiful, succulents, diy, grow, green, Proven, Winners, Fall, Winter, summer, spring, plant, planting, growing, plants, succulent, shrubs, shrub, bush, soil, dirt, earth

Id: 1Zby3ptzJAE

Length: 17min 54sec (1074 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 27 2020